Jamesian Lying/Jamesian Intimacies

Leo Bersani’s readings of The Golden Bowl in “The Jamesian Lie” and The Freudian Body suggest that Jamesian sociability represents an obstacle to Bersani's attempt to recuperate an admittedly oxymoronic “metaphysical sociability” for a new “ethics” of “connectedness.” James is resigned to the surface / depth schema that Bersani's utopian enterprise wants to think beyond. Because the Jamesian text's “superficiality” does not extend to the scheme of human psychology that is represented as motivating the characters' actions, The Golden Bowl insists on the continued presence of a self determined through intersubjectivity within the utopian space of sociability and cruising.